This invention relates to a fastening device for office furniture and more particularly to a design which aligns and connects two adjacent furniture components. In a preferred embodiment, the fastening device includes three cooperating members, one being a rotatable member, another a bolt-like member and the third an elongated insert having dove-tailed sides.
Various proposals have been made for designs and methods of constructing office furniture which are intended to facilitate ease of assembly. One such proposal is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,564, wherein releasably securable connecting members are used to interconnect planar panels. The connections between adjacent panels are made using a conventional connecting device comprising an elongated metallic element which is externally threaded at one end for engagement in one of the panels. A cooperating plug member is disposed within a cylindrical bore in a second, supporting panel, with its central longitudinal axis coincident with the central axis of the bore. Access of the elongated member to the plug is provided by a precision drilled, precisely dimensioned cylindrical passageway communicating with the plug and extending in a radial direction with respect to its central axis.
The design of the connector in U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,564 is subject to a number of limitations. The requirement of a precisely dimensioned bore which provides access to the plug requires close tolerances which are often difficult to achieve in a high speed manual production process. Moreover, the axes of the bores for the plug and the elongated member will be perpendicular in those applications where the panels are assembled at true right angles. The two bores must therefore be made in two manufacturing steps, and must be drilled from two adjacent surfaces of the supporting panel, thus precluding manufacture using conventional automated multi-tool routers.